Top 4 Best Free Webcomic Hosting Sites

So you’ve decided to start a webcomic but don’t have the money or not willing to spend at all? Here are the top 4 best free webcomic hosting sites that will host your webcomic for free, no ifs and no buts about it. You may want to read this before starting a webcomic though.

Comic Genesis

Since I’ve had personal experience in using Comic Genesis, I’ll start with this one. Comic Genesis is one of the oldest free webcomic hosts in the Internet. It’s also home to countless crappy webcomics, but hey, you gotta start somewhere; some popular webcomics started here got their start here! To check out what you can do there, check out the sites I made for Cat Nine: Take Two and the old Cat Nine.Pros:

The most customizable of the bunch if you know some HTML and CSS.

Uses FTP so you can quickly up/download files

Easily use Keentags.

Accepts Flash and GIF animation

You can get your own forum.

“Newsbox” to advertise your comic through other webcomics

You can collaborate with other artists even with different accounts. Haven’t used it myself though.

RSS, not that detailed though.

Can schedule comics in advance

The only thing they want from you is the leaderboard ad at the top, and a footer note at the bottom of the page

Cons:

The least user-friendly of them all

I’m not really sure if it still accepts new comics

If it does, it takes a few days before it’s up

You’ll need some HTML and CSS knowledge if you want to take use its full potential.

If you don’t care about customizing your website and have no idea about HTML or CSS, then The Duck is perfect for you.

Smack Jeeves

I don’t have any experience with using this, but from what I can see, it’s almost as customizable as Comic Genesis, with the user friendliness of Drunk Duck. They also offer a premium hosting service (for a fee of course) which adds more features. It’s a lot cheaper than actually getting web hosting, though it still has some limitations. I can see higher quality comics can be found here.Pros:

More customizable than The Duck

User friendly interface

Bulk Uploads (have to be donator at least)

Built in comment system

Rating system

Newly updated comics show up at the home page

Forums

Create web pages

Your own domain name, but you have to buy it first

Automatic archive page

Share buttons

RSS

Analytics

Cons:

Still not as customizable as Comic Genesis if you’re not you’re a premium subscriber (I think)

Can’t upload Flash if not a donator or a subscriber

File size limit, though anything more than 300KB is bad

File size limit raised to 2MB and 5MB for donator and subscriber.

I’m gonna say Smack Jeeves seems like a great choice even if I don’t have any experience with using it. It doesn’t give that “crappy webcomics” vibe here unlike Comic Genesis and The Duck, although I suspect it’s because most of them will end up on those two (no offense). That, or the higher quality comics get to the front page more, so it’s definitely an incentive to increase quality.

Comic Fury

Another site I have no experience with using so I’m going to infer a lot from some of the webcomics found at the front page and from their website’s about page.Pros:

Allows you to choose from 3 subdomains for your comic. No more “What a waaste!” or “Oh noes someone beat me to it!” if someone already has a comic with a similar name with your own. I think so anyway.

Allows you to easily create extra pages, with HTML if needed.

Ad-free

You can use your own domain name if you own one

Search and transcription system that allows people to search your comics

Author notes and blog

Comment system

Rating system

You can change your comic’s URL and name any time

HTML pages are customizable with templates or design your own

Collaborating with co-authors is a breeze, you can assign permissions to restrict what they can do

Allows your readers to subscribe through RSS or by registering as a member

Flash support, and probably GIFs

Bookmarking

Cons:

No forums of your own

Looks like Comic Fury is the winner if you’re looking for an excellent free webcomic host! I hate to say it, and even though I’ve moved from Comic Genesis by now, I simply can’t find any cons(minus the forums) with Comic Fury as of now. If you find other great sites, just let me know! And if you found this post useful, I’d appreciate it a lot if you link to my catgirl webcomic!